


Starfall Rhapsody

by Sirifel



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-13 22:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirifel/pseuds/Sirifel
Summary: A series of moments taken from the life of Andronikos Revel and the Sith Inquisitor (in this iteration, a Miraluka named Iyala)





	1. Starfall Rhapsody

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote several small "off-screen" scenes when I first started playing swtor in 2015 (trying to get myself hyped for TFA). Most of them stayed in a paper notebook, never transcribed to my computer.  
> When Andronikos finally came back, I was disappointed (but not surprised) by the mildness of the reunion and I stayed up (accidentally) until 3 AM writing an extended scene to satisfy myself. I figured, then, if I was going to share that, I ought to dust off and post the rest to go with it.

The Miraluka people have no eyes. They navigate their surroundings by the feel of the Force, or… something like that. Andronikos has trouble imagining what that means.

He’s seen a few members of the species here and there, or he thinks he has. Anything that looks human and wears a veil is potentially a Miraluka, but he knows they aren't common. He has never known one personally.

Not until the Sith.

He asks her about it one night, after he’s convinced her to have a drink with him.

"I have pierced into the minds of sighted creatures and seen through their eyes," she says, keen and severe. He can tell it’s an act. He hasn’t known her for long, but he knows how she plays. "You sighted creatures see so little. My vision is not impaired by walls or by darkness. I see the shape of the Force. I see it spilling up from the ground with the spring grass. I see its silent rivers in the blackness between the stars. I see the way it cascades over your skin and chases the blood through your veins."

"Gross."

She turns up her nose at his irreverence, but her offense is part of the game. He knows she likes it. He can see more than she thinks.

.

"Say, Iyala, do you dance?"

"I..." She’s caught off guard by the question. She recovers from her moment of weakness with wry humor. "Between the slavery and the Sith training, no, I can't say I have much experience."

Andronikos smiles. He knows she can't see it, but he also knows she'll sense it, just like she'll sense the hand he extends, palm up. "Lucky for you, I'm a good teacher."

Her hand is slim and tiny in his, fine-boned, too fragile for the monstrous creature she pretends to be. "Is dancing a requirement for success as a pirate?"

"It helps."

.

He'd be lying if he said that sleeping with a Sith had never crossed his mind. Pirates tend to dream big. It was in the nature of people who put their lives and their freedom on the line with every job. He's imagined quite a lot, but farfetched fantasies are only that. The reality is...

... Well, he isn’t afraid to admit, afterwards, that he’d thought a Sith would be cruel in bed. It was how they kept their power, as far as he understood it. Hardness. Ruthlessness. Ambition. He may not know the Force, but he knows power. He admired it in the field. He didn’t think it would bother him in the bedroom. He'd been prepared for it, but she takes him by surprise.

She isn't cruel. She isn't even selfish. She is perfectly plain about what she wants, and she likes it a bit rough, but she is careful and considerate with her partner. She doesn’t take more than is offered, and she gives as much as she receives.

It isn't only in acts of sex, either, and it isn't only with him. To those who make up her inner circle, the Dark Lord is kind.

He asks her about it one night, as they lay on rumpled sheets with heavy breaths and sweat on their skin. In answer, she recites the Sith code.

When she is finished, he laughs.

"Babe, that's the code of _life._ " He waves a hand expressively at the ceiling. She can’t see it, but she turns her head towards him regardless. It’s funny the way she does that. "Everybody's competing for power, overcoming conflict—and growing from it, I guess. Pursuing passions. Freedom. Honestly, that's what life is. I expected your Sith code to be all blood and death and slavery—though I guess that last bit wouldn't suit you so well." He rolls over to plant a kiss on her face, wanting to amend the slip. It’s old history, but still a sore subject for her. Likely it always will be. Another measure of her kindness, he thinks, that she would disdain and forsake the circumstance of her childhood rather than turning that cruelty against others.

He was wary around her at first, for a time, but she gives him little reason to be. It’s one of the things he falls in love with—the way she will choose to kill or spare an enemy on a whim, depending on her mood, yet to those she deigns trust, she will go out of her way to be fair, to be helpful, even when there is no reward for her.

Altruism is definitely not part of the Sith code.

Then again, he thinks, it might all be for self-gain in the long run. More than once, an act of kindness without demand is paid back by unfailing loyalty. Kindness is not expected from a Lord of the Sith, and that makes it all the more valuable in the minds of those who find themselves on the receiving end.

If it is all a gambit for power, it’s one act he can’t see through.

.

“Wait, can... Can you see this painting with the Force?”

“I can see the artist’s intention. I can see what they saw in their mind’s eye, what they meant to capture. It probably doesn’t look the same to you.”

“You could always look through my eyes.”

“I could.” She does. “Hmm. It’s flatter than I thought.”

He chuckles.

She’s had him hang the painting above her bed— _their_ bed—in the upper floor of her apartment in Kaas City. Andronikos doesn’t know why she has an apartment—why _they_ have an apartment—when they spend most of their nights on the ship, and far away. As seldom as it’s used, the place is lovingly maintained, furnished to suit a Dark Lord of the Sith, decorated with relics and battle trophies and Iyala’s surprising collection of speeders. A droid keeps it tidy in their absence so that when they do find time to come back, it looks as if they've never left.

He really doesn’t get the appeal.

As long as he has food in his belly and a warm place to sleep, he's learned not to care what it looks like. Besides that, he has never been a fan of permanent residences. If things go south—and they usually do—he likes to know that he can flip a few switches and fly his whole house to another planet, or straight out into dead space if need be. Stationary houses feel like a trap.

Iyala is well aware of his feelings. She confesses, even, to sharing them. The thing is, Iyala likes to play the odds. He learned that about her early. She takes big risks with a smile on her face, unwavering, as if she is challenging the universe herself. For all he knows, that's exactly what she's doing. It sounds like a Sith thing to do, he thinks, though no measure of time or intimacy has brought him closer to understanding the Force.

Force-guided or not, she doesn't always win—not, at least, in a straight-forward fashion. To her, however, failure is just the next challenge. Iyala is a survivor. She prides herself on adaptability, on knowing how to hit a target from the side. He's seen her turn losses into victories with nothing but a few choice words and an unyielding will to succeed. Even the fiasco with the ghosts had worked out in the end, miraculously. He can think of more than one instance during that endeavor alone where he, in her place, would have thrown in the towel.

That’s all over now and the ghosts are gone, but thinking of it still makes his teeth clench. That first time he saw her prone and defeated on the ground had been the first time he'd defined his feelings for her. It's almost laughable, looking back. All his life he's disdained weakness, scorned the defeated, but even the strongest warriors fall eventually, and when the time came for her, he couldn't see it as a fault. Not at all. He could only try not to choke as his heart climbed up his throat. He could only hold onto her small, frail body until he was sure, as sure as he could be, that letting go wouldn't somehow let her fall clear out of his world.

It had not been the last time he'd seen her fall, but always she rose again. Always she scrapes up the dregs of her power and builds herself higher than before. That, he decides, is a greater strength than to rise and only rise until a first and final fall.

One day, maybe, Andronikos will stop questioning it when Iyala smiles her sly smile and plays against the odds.


	2. Dark Side Blues

It was one of their get-togethers in the Odessan base's cantina. It was nice. They almost convinced Senya to sing. Now it's just Iyala, alone, at a table in the corner. Her people give her space as she nurses the last drink she'll allow herself for the night. They respect her even in this state. They can afford leniency because they know she'll get the job done. The way most of them figure it, even their commander needs a break sometimes.

One of them knows better than that.  
  
"Are you alright?"

Iyala quirks her lips without humor and takes a long while to contemplate her answer before giving it. "Would it be a terrible blow to your morale if I said no?"

Lana pulls a chair up and puts an arm around her shoulders, a kindness without premeditation. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, Lana..." Iyala's mask is already crumbling. There is no sense in stand-offishness now. She lays her head on the woman's shoulder. "What use does a Sith have for love, anyway?"

"You're thinking about Andronikos, aren't you?"

It is a relief that Lana can read her so easily. She had been afraid, for just a moment, that her words would be misconstrued. It was a foolish fear, and not fair to Lana. Jealousy has never been an issue between them. "He must know I'm alive by now. Arcann's not quiet about it. The rumors must have reached him."

"It's a big galaxy. You know him better than I do, but I expect this war isn't his cup of tea. Who knows which rumors have reached the outer rim backwaters and pirate dens, or how distorted they are when they get there. He might have heard your new title, but he might not know that it's you."

"He said he would look for me," she argues, her voice rising without her permission, bordering on a whine. It shames her. It makes her feel like a petulant child, guilty with her neediness and unable to contain it. "There was a letter, from after we were separated…."

"Which was five years ago," Lana reminds her. "I don't want to say that he's given up on you, but... it's possible he's waiting. Staying out of the hotspots and hoping to catch word." She’s stroking Iyala's shaven scalp, careful not to dislodge the band that holds the veil in place. "When we take care of Arcann and your power base is secure, we can make your presence known across the galaxy again. News of Darth Nox restored will reach him for certain. I wouldn't worry."

Iyala sighs and pulls her head away. "I know... You're right. My feelings are a distraction."

"Nonsense,” Lana tells her, firm and affectionate. “Love is passion. Use it. Remember who is keeping you apart from your love and destroy them. You think loving someone makes you less Sith, but you're wrong." She turns Iyala's face toward her then, smiling bittersweet, and steals a kiss. "It's quite the other way around."

.

It is Aric Jorgan and his rescued refugees who make her realize—make it finally sink in—this isn't the Empire she had grown up and come to power in. This isn't the Empire that had made a slave of her, only then to discover her worth and bind her to a new form of slavery—become Sith or die. Cruelty is not a commodity here as it had been on Korriban and Dromund Kaas. Kindness isn't seen as a weakness to be exploited, nor a disease to be eradicated. The streak of mercy which she has long struggled to cull out of herself is respected in the Alliance, not scorned. She doesn't have to fear backstabbing, figurative or literal, at every given hint of softness. For the first time in a very long time, she can be herself.

Whoever that is.

Perhaps it is by coincidence, or perhaps it is by the will of the Force. Either way, when Satele Shan finds her in the woods and offers her a new path to take, Iyala is ready.

.

"Commander?" It’s Lana standing outside the open door of her chamber. "Are you well?"

"Statement: My master is in low power mode," HK-55's high, grinding voice informs her. "Recommendation: Please refrain from disturbing her, or I may be required to use violence."

"I'm not sleeping, HK. I'm meditating."

"Appeasement: Apologies, Master, but it all looks the same to me."

"Let Lana in."

A mechanical sigh. "As you wish, Master."

Lana's footsteps drew a line from the entrance to the foot of the dais. Iyala pulls her awareness back from the stars, grounding her focus in her immediate surroundings and reading the warp of the Force around her dearest friend—the tension in her shoulders and the frown on her lips. Worry oozes from her skin like tails of too-sharp incense smoke, as visible as anything to a Miraluka's sight.

"You've been meditating since morning," Lana says, delicate, as if she thinks Iyala doesn't know that. "Is Valkorion troubling you?"

"Valkorion has grown impatient with me and taken his leave." She waits for the flare of alarm and is rewarded.

 _"What?_ He can do that? But I thought..."

"So did I."

"Where has he gone? Will he aid Arcann now?"

"No. That's not his interest. I think he will come back to me once he has spent some of his frustration on paving our way. He said... things to imply that I was his only option. He wasn't the only one who said that."

"Oh?"

Iyala fills her in, briefly, on Satele and Darth Marr's presence on Odessan.

"Theron's _mother_ wants to train you as a Jedi?"

"Not… exactly. She thinks that Arcann and Vaylin cannot be defeated by either the Dark or the Light. She and Valkorion seem to be in agreement on this."

"Then... what?"

"I am to find a new way, I suppose. Use both, or neither. I don't know."

"Hence the meditating." Lana doesn’t sound pleased.

"Sit down." Iyala pats the floor beside her. Lana ascends the steps to obey. "It's funny, I'm not angry about what they took anymore. Or I am, but... I don't feel it." She puts a hand to her chest, where the absence of pain and tightness still feel strange.

"There is no emotion, there is peace?" There is only a hint of irony in Lana’s words.

"Or I am at peace with my emotions."

Lana smiles like someone who is about to inflict pain and wants to soften the blow. "You were quite a wreck a few nights ago."

Iyala reflects the smile. "I know."

"You don't feel that way anymore?"

"I do," she says, serene. "I still miss him and I want him back. I still worry about where he is, but I know that he's alive, and I know that when this is over, if I survive, I'll find him."

"At peace with your emotions," Lana repeats, comprehending.

"Well," Iyala amends, "I'm putting in the effort."


	3. Ode To Odessen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was titled "Waltz For Odessen" in keeping with the Cowboy Bebop-esque titles. Weeks after posting it, I was in the shower and went "wait..."

She could have left the interrogation up to Hylo, or sent someone else. It would have been the appropriate response. The commander of the Alliance can hardly be expected to answer every nameless ruffian who demands an audience with her.

The alternative, though, is to keep looking, ceaseless, for clues to Theron's plans and whereabouts, and in all honestly, she's about at her limit. Were he any other enemy—someone she genuinely disliked—it would be easy, but hunting a friend is only depressing. She wants to believe he’s playing an elaborate game of triple agent and will come back into her fold—she wants to believe that he never really left—but regardless, he should have been honest with her. His lack of faith is an insult.

And after all she’s done to move beyond her Imperial past, it hurts.

An excursion to play the old Sith Lord intimidation game on some arrogant space rat will make for a refreshing break, if nothing else. Perhaps Lana will come to a breakthrough while she's gone, though the hope is an empty one.

She feels him when she steps off the shuttle, the resonance of his nearness hitting like change in air pressure. She almost doesn't know what she's feeling at first, but it is... It can only be him. The message had said pirates, and it's him. She can see the shape of him in her mind now as clear as the day they parted. He's a few years older, a few years grumpier, but she'd know her pirate anywhere.

She realizes that she's stopped walking, stunned and distracted by the impending reunion. She isn't feeling anything yet, really, other than surprise and a steady, upward pull in her chest, but more will come.

Iyala squares her shoulders, lifts her chin, and proceeds.

In the corridor outside his cell, she hears his voice for the first time. "Keep your stinking paws off me," he’s snapping at Hylo, and she smiles to herself. That string tied to her heart pulls harder.

"The tough guy act won't work on me." Visz growls. Iyala wonders if she's been gentle.

"Yeah? "Well, let me talk to the son of a hutt in charge and you'll see how tough I really am." Andronikos doesn't sound like he's in pain. She isn't getting a sense of distress through the Force, either. Only tight-strung impatience. He's overconfident.

She comes to the end of the corridor. He hasn't noticed her yet. He isn't listening. He would see her if he just turned his head, but he’s laying into Hylo as if he could actually win that fight. The idiot.

She breathes in. She switches off the energy field.

She makes her entrance.

The range of emotions he projects in the next three seconds are more than she's picked up from some people in a month. Surprise turns to recognition turns to another kind of surprise, and then denial, and then profound, desperate relief. She wonders what all those feelings look like to human eyes. "... Thought I'd seen enough ghosts to last a lifetime. But this..."

It's funny. In other circumstances, she'd laugh. She's almost stopped remembering Lord Zash, Thanaton, her misadventures with the lingering dead. Events which had once seemed definitive of her very self now reside as pale memories—as ghosts themselves in the shadow of the Eternal Throne.

The memory of her husband has never faded so.

"Plundering my ships..." She feels herself smile. "Harassing my admiral... That's the Andronikos I missed." And now that she's put it to words, she feels it. She feels it all at once. The string pulls, sharp, not upward but forward. She sways with it, just a little, a tree in the wind, but she keeps her footing. There is a version of her that was never an empress nor a commander, not a Sith nor a slave. There is a part of her, deep inside, that is only her—only Iyala, a woman, a girl—a Miraluka in love with a human man who has been lost to her for years.

That part of her wants only to throw herself across the minuscule distance between them and be caught up in strong, warm, solid arms.

She denies that part of her, but she basks in the ache of its yearning. A former Sith knows how to savor her pain.

Whatever is transpiring within his own inner dialogue, it pleases her to sense a similar restraint. She feels the lock he places over his emotions. She hears the exhale of breath, the forced release of tension. He wants as much as she does to react, to touch, to shout, but he won't. The truest joy is in that he doesn't have to, and neither does she. They’ve found each other. There is no need to hurry.

"We have a lot of catching up to do."

.  
They talk only lightly during the short flight back to Odessan, as might any two acquaintances who haven't seen in each other in a while. She tells him in simple, cheerful summary how capture by Arcann had led to her seat on the Eternal Throne, which she in turn had given away to an artificial intelligence. She tells it in a manner of light humor, smiling most of the way through— “and then the man who held me prisoner for five years had a crisis of conscience and we’re good friends now.”

“So I can’t shoot him, then?”

“No, you may not.”

Andronikos pays for the story with an equal mix of amazement and amusement. "I don't know why I'm surprised," he says when she’s finished. "I should have known it was you all along."

"You should have," she agrees. "I kept waiting for you to write, or to show up at my door."

"I'm sorry." When his mood sobers and sinks, it threatens to drag her down with it. Too easy it is to lament the time lost, the days spent in longing and unknowing. Too many nights she'd sought her bed only to lay awake, remembering his breath on her neck and his arms around her, imagining where he might be and what he might be doing. Had she eyes, she would have wept. Sometimes she would go to Lana, but what she and Lana have between them is different. They love each other as friends and they bed each other as lovers, but they are not in love.

Iyala has known many agonies, has learned to endure all of them and draw strength from most, but missing her beloved was a pain she could never master. She misses him still, as if her scarred and limping heart has yet to catch up with reality. She expects it won't until she allows herself to touch him—really touch him. Their kiss in the cell has already become a fleeting and distant thing.

He feels the same.

.

The Alliance has always been a ragtag mess of misfits. No one questions a stranger accompanied by the Commander. He admires the cliffside view and Iyala pauses to let him, but only for a moment. The breeze is too soft and too fragrant. The sunlight tingles on her skin in too intimate a way. She fears if they linger too long, she will lose a lifetime's worth of self-control and make a fool of herself on the open docks.

She doesn't take his hand, although she'd like to. She walks with the serenity and purpose she’s known for nd he follows.

Lana is below, pausing in her work as her Commander returns. Most of the people of the Alliance never knew Andronikos, but Lana did. Iyala feels her recognition, her surprise, her comprehension. She feels the indrawn breath, the stuttered hesitation. She feels the budding bloom of selfless joy. "... Andronikos,” says Lana, masking surprise behind playful scorn. “It's about time."

He salutes her, cocky and irreverent. "Damn right it is."

"We'll be in my chamber," Iyala informs her, giving away nothing in her tone of voice. "Emergencies only, please."

"Of course, Commander."

.

She turns on him as he crosses the threshold. She slides the door shut behind him with a twitch of the Force. He is looking at her, at where her eyes would be. She can see herself in his mind.

"Iyala..."

She kisses him, hard, rising up on her toes and pressing him back against the door. He’d often teased her about her short, slight form, but there is nothing in the galaxy that feels the way his hands feel around her waist, the way they can almost encircle her completely. It is not very Sith to find comfort in vulnerability, but then, she had never chosen to be Sith.

Andronikos wrenches their mouths apart, torturing them both in the most delicious way. "Iyala, _fuck,_ I missed you."

"I know."

"Take this thing off." his fingers slide under the bundled cloth around her head. He doesn't wait for her to do as she's told. The veil lifts without ceremony and he lets it fall to the floor, giving it not a second thought. She can feel his eyes on her face, roving, memorizing, lingering on the parts she keeps hidden. Miraluka tradition is to cover their vestigial eye sockets. She was taken too young from her family, from her species, and never had time to ask the questions that children ask. She doesn’t know whether the custom developed before or after non-human prejudices became prevalent. The claim is that species with eyes will find them grotesque, but Andronikos has only ever been curious—been welcoming. He doesn't like the veil. He’d told her that years ago. He doesn't like that custom demands she hide her differences.

It is romantic drivel, but it's honest, and she lets her heart fill and flutter. She doesn't try this time, as she so often does, to hold it down.

He is far too soft when he kisses the ridge above each empty recess, one and then the other, and his thumbs trace lines from their corners, curving back over the crests of her ears and coming to rest with fingers clasped at the base of her shaven skull.

.

The first lovemaking is fast and desperate. She urges him on, demanding more and harder. She wants it to hurt. She wants bites and bruises and that deep, sweet ache. She wants to feel him for hours.

The second time is slow, quiet, reverent. They take their time, but only as much as they care to. There is no restraint, no holding back, only lazy, languid pleasure. He kisses every mark he left before, caresses the places where he'd held her hard enough to bruise. They climax together and hold each other a long time afterward.

"I am no longer a Sith," she tells him eventually, while his hand paints lines of sensation over the rise of her hip.

"You know I'll follow you no matter what you are." The combination of humor and profound devotion in the statement is a treasure she would like to lock away and keep forever.

"Even if I am occasionally a nice person?" She is joking, but also she isn't.

"You were always a nice person. Too nice for the Sith. You haven't changed that much."

"Was I? You never said anything."

"And hurt your feelings?" He kisses her brow and she can feel the trace of a smile on his lips, but then he's serious. "You needed the Sith to survive. Now you don’t. I knew you'd figure yourself out when the time was right."

Iyala finds his face with her hand, mapping its weathered planes. "When did you become so wise?"

"I didn't." He turns his head, fractionally, to kiss her palm. "I just know my wife."


End file.
